Vietlott dismisses rumour of being unable to pay out jackpot

After the winner was announced on October 16, many people were wondering where the 100 per cent state-owned Vietlott would get the money to pay the prize as the company has not made profit in the past three months after it launched the Mega 6/45 lottery.

The rumour was dismissed by Vietlott deputy general director Nguyen Thanh Dam, who told newswire vietnamnet.vn that the company has the necessary funds to do good on its obligations, otherwise the prize would have been adjusted.

According to Dam, for the first draw, the company prepared VND12 billion ($540,000) to cover a possible jackpot. Afterwards, it put 55 per cent of the revenue from ticket sales into a fund to cover the ever-increasing prize. A part of this fund goes into recovering the initial VND12 billion, another part to covering smaller prizes, and the remainder accumulates into the jackpot prize. 

“By the time of the 17th draw on August 26, we had already recovered the initial VND12 billion. At that time, the jackpot was VND24.214 billion ($1.1 million). After the following 22 draws, the prize rose to VND92 billion ($4.1 million). The money comes from ticket sales revenue. It does not come from our pockets or the state budget.”

Professor Augustine Ha Ton Vinh, a Vietnamese American and expert in gaming, said that people are more likely to buy lottery tickets when the prize is high, so the bigger the prize, the more likely it is to find a winner.

Vietlott has to put into the state budget all the profit that it retains after paying tax and making contributions to multiple government funds.

In 2015, as announced by the Ministry of Finance, lottery companies in Vietnam had a total revenue of $3 billion and submitted $1 billion to the state budget. 

Vietnam’s GDP per capita was $2,111 in 2015, according to data by the World Bank. VIR earlier reported that a Tra Vinh farmer won the prize. The actual winner was recently revealed to be his daughter, who sells meat at the local market. She said she was going to give 25 kilogrammes of rice and VND200,000 ($9.3) to 400 people each.